1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to multistation cigar wrapping machinery having a cigar bunch supply station, a cigar wrapper supply station, and a conveyor for conveying the bunches to a cigar wrapping station at which the wrappers are spirally applied about the bunches. More particularly, the present invention relates to respacer and/or reorienter feed arrangements for and methods of continuously feeding cigar wrappers in proper spaced-apart relationship and/or orientation to the wrapping stations of such machinery.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has been proposed in the field of commercial cigar wrapping machinery to feed wrappers to a wrapping station in an intermittent, semi-automatic manner. The wrappers are thus repeatedly stopped and thereupon restarted during their transport to the wrapping station at which they are spirally applied about the bunches. The start-and-stop motion of the wrapper stock is inefficient, time-consuming, and has restricted production output rates to relatively low values, typically on the order of twenty wrapped cigars per minute.
It has further been proposed in this field to feed wrappers in a more continuous manner to the wrapping station. However, this proposal requires that alternate wrappers be picked off the wrapper conveyor. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,692, FIG. 35, which issued on a copending application owned by a common assignee. Put another way, rather than selecting the time at which a wrapper arrives at the wrapping station, as taught by the first mentioned prior art proposal, the second mentioned proposal selects which wrapper would arrive at the wrapping station at the appropriate time. Although the latter proposal is generally satisfactory for its intended purpose, each wrapper is not handled in its turn, thereby resulting in production inefficiency. This means that the non-selected wrappers must be handled, if at all, at another downstream wrapping station. The provision of multiple wrapping stations results, of course, in added production costs.